Professor Layton and the Curious Village

You'll love it so much you'll want to hate it.

A

Feb 13, 2008 12:48PM PST

So I picked up this game thinkings it's going to be a Phoenix Wright-esque game that will keep me going until Apollo Justice drops, and it just blew me away. First of all the graphical style is great. I think the environment they put you in is great, and the characters you meet on the way is great. The story seems to be coming a long great, although it starts off a bit lacking.

Right from the get-go you start solving puzzles. This game teaches you that solving puzzles is the key to life, and this is especially true in this game. In fact, its pretty much all you do. You'll solve puzzle after puzzle after puzzle. Sounds repetitive, but due to the rich variety in the puzzles and riddles is poses to you, it never gets tired.

Instead, it makes you very, very angry. Some of these puzzles are easy enough to get at a first glance, but soon they get more and more tough. So tough that I soon became frustrated at even the simplest looking puzzles (it was a tile puzzle!). I even began thinking of ways of the ways i would destroy my DS and the process it would take to get a new DS so I can continue the game.

I just think the way they pose the puzzles to you is a bit odd. Instead of "Hey look a broken clock, lets solve this puzzle to fix it," it's more like "Man, what a lovely day, time to solve a puzzle!" or "Hi. Solve this puzzle." It just seems weird to me and I'm not sure whether or not the person I'm talking to will advance the story, give me a puzzle, or both. Not to mention the biggest puzzle of the game, the game itself. It's a point and click (or rather, tap) adventure game reminiscent of the old PC games of the 90s. You click your boot to figure out where to go and go to new areas. You can find hint coins, that you use to pay for hints in the puzzles, throughout the town by tapping on various items in the town. Some items make sense (barrels, boxes), but others don't (signs, the cracks in the ground).

Overall it's a very solid game and I highly recommend it for everyone to play. You'll love playing this game and it is highly addictive. Many times I've wanted to stop playing only to pick it up 5 minutes later. So get this game, put your brain to work, and solve those puzzles!